Google First Quarter Report

Google has released its first quarter financial report, and to no one’s surprise, they’ve brought in more money in revenue than you can conceptualize.

Google brought in $14 billion in revenues over those three months, up from $10.6 billion reported for Q1 2012 last year, a 31 percent increase. Net income came in at $3.3 billion, which represents a more modest 15.8 percent year-on-year increase over Q1 2012, which was about $2.9 billion. Newly acquired Motorola represented a loss for Google, albeit a very modest one. Motorola brought in $1.01 billion in revenue, compared to $1.29 billion in costs. The $280 million loss doesn’t mean all that much in light of the rest of Google’s revenues, which says a lot – you know you’re doing well when you can shrug off a $280 million loss.

Also, in case you forgot what Google’s core business was, in the midst of all this talk about Glass and smartphones and tablets, consider this – of that $14 billion in revenue, about $1 billion came from Motorola, with another $1.05 billion coming from “other.” Other would be all that smartphone and tablet stuff, along with who knows what else. The other roughly $12 billion? All advertising revenue. If Facebook wants to compete primarily with a business model centered around advertising, it has quite the uphill climb ahead of it.

The last bit of good news for Google is that it has $50 billion laying around in cash that it can do whatever it wants with, which is almost disgusting. That’s an incredible glut of cash. We’ll soon see what, if anything, they’ll do with that cash (safe money is on more acquisitions), but they’ll probably do something, since this report isn’t quite as strong as the company’s performance in late 2012. Still, a healthy start to 2013 for a tech titan.